824: NEARbound marketing, connection CHEMISTRY, and the power of COMMUNITY w/ Paul Jones

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Hey, what is up?

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Welcome to this episode of the Entrepreneur to Entrepreneur podcast.

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As always, I'm your host, brian LoFromento, and I'm so excited for all of us to hear from today's guests, because he's described by a combination of two words that I've never seen go together, and those two words are a connection chemist.

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I love that.

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A connection chemist.

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His name is Paul Jones.

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Paul is a visionary dedicated to forging deeper human connections through community building and innovative products.

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At the helm of his company, bridgio, which is a bootstrap startup, he empowers businesses to go to market by cultivating vibrant communities.

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All of that want.

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All of us want that surrounding our businesses, and Paul's going to illuminate so much of that for us here today.

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Beyond, beyond his entrepreneurial endeavors, paul has also pioneered distinctive communities such as the fractional executive collective, and I love the name of this next one Kick sass founders.

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Like sass, as in software as a service company, kick sass founders, further solidifying his reputation as a leader in fostering authentic networks and relationships.

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This is going to be a fun one.

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You're in for a treat, so let's dive straight into my interview with Paul Jones.

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All right, paul, I'm so excited that you're here today.

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First things first, welcome to the show.

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Thanks, brian, it's awesome to be here.

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Heck, yeah.

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So I tease listeners a little bit about this connection chemist, but take us beyond the bio.

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Who the heck is Paul?

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How did you start doing all these great things that you do today?

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Oh, wow, that is a loaded question.

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Appreciate that, though.

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I think the connection chemist side of it is if we look at our world today, we can feel so connected.

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I mean, we have all these social programs, but and a lot of people say it and it's almost just overkill at this point but where's the authentic connection?

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And if you look at some of the studies that people have done, if you look at some of the longest relational studies that people have done, the best way to have a happy life is actually through your relationships.

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The best way to avoid mental health problems and disorders is to have healthy relationships, and so, focusing on the connection aspect, um, has kind of been what, for me, has emerged throughout my life, and that's kind of the journey that I'm on, and it's it's likely going to change the connection part of it's not going to change, but the way that I go about thinking about connection chemistry is probably going to change.

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The chemistry side of that is what I've noticed, um, just as in my past as a river guide and and being in the outdoor industry, is when you get people that climb mountains together, they are not going to skip a beat and they're going to connect with each other.

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If you get people that play music or create music, you, you get them together, they are going to not skip a beat and they're going to be able to connect over it.

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So, all of a sudden, all of these preconceived notions, all of these things that stop us from connecting, are eliminated and people are able to have some really cool conversations.

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So, uh, driving that home a little bit further, as, uh, you know, when I was a river guide, we're, we're taking people down the river every single day.

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Um, and we're taken, you know, in my boat I could have a doctor, a hedge fund manager and and the CEO of some big company.

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All of those titles go away because the commonality that we share was this sense of adventure together.

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And then that level goes up.

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If, if you're meeting with a bunch of river guides, the fun thing is, as you're sitting around the campfire, you're meeting with a bunch of river guides, a bunch of river guides.

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The stories that we're swapping are the stories when we flip the raft.

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So these are failure stories when we didn't quite tee up to the rapid and and this person back here fell out of the raft and you had to you know, throw bag, you had to throw a throwback to him and pull him back into the raft and and, and these are the stories that create connection is these stories where you know things didn't actually quite go, uh, perfectly.

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So in a world where we're trying to present ourselves as perfect, the real connection side of it is is when you feel like you can show up and you can talk about your failure stories.

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You know failure story.

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I say failure stories because, uh, we get what that means, but what I, what I mean by failure stories really is sometimes you win, sometimes you learn.

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So it's those learning stories that really help us to connect with one another.

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And so creating experiences, um, that enable people to have those conversations, um, I think is is a massive opportunity in today's world.

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Turn off the filters, let's let's sit down and have a real conversation that helps us connect.

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So that's the connection and then the chemistry side of it.

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Yeah, I love that overview, paul.

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It almost makes me want to ask the most simplistic question that I'm going to ask you today, which is hearing you talk about these things and understanding connection as adults.

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Like, of course, we all want connection.

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Every single human being is crying out for connection.

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So why the heck do we not do it?

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Because when you list these examples, I mean I know the people who I naturally connect to.

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If someone's from Boston, immediately we're connected.

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If someone's a Manchester United fan or a Boston Celtics fan, there's those immediate connections.

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But it just feels like, as adults, I mean, we don't walk around showing all of our passions and our commonalities on our bodies.

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Gosh, I wish that we did.

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It would make it a heck of a lot easier to meet people and to connect with people.

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But with those things in mind, what's so hard about connection for us?

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That is a great question and that's actually a question.

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So when I left the outdoor industry basically RiverGuide throughout my college career literally lived in a van down by the river, super fun.

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I left that.

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I started my own paddleboarding business, sold that then I got into corporate and I remember going.

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I was part of a SaaS company and we flew out to San Francisco and we were at Saster.

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And what was really interesting to me is in answer to your question, brian, the short answer is I think we actually need guides, we need experiences that guide, the connection, and so the example, the juxtaposition that I have is at Saster, I'm sitting in this room with thousands of other entrepreneurs thousands and all of us are listening to one person speak and that doesn't.

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If you stop and think about that for a second, like that's kind of weird.

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It's kind of strange that we all get together and then we all listen to one person speak.

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But the value in that room, if you look at the aggregated experience, that going back to learnings, the aggregated learning experience of everybody, all the entrepreneurs that were in that room right there, if you could somehow access that, you would learn way more than the keynote speaker speaking now.

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We need to have people inspiring us, but the challenge that I think that I was, that I saw from that conference and pretty much every conference I've been to, is the opportunity to connect with other attendees in such a way as learning is shared between one another, and the thing that I think that's lacking to your point is that, you know.

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What's really interesting to me is when covered happened, all of us were forced to go online, and I think the mistake that we made was we tried to mimic real life experiences in the digital environment and what that ended up being was these unstructured old school networking things where the Extravert is getting all the mileage out of the meetings and not everyone's able to talk and it's just kind of a mess.

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And so, coming from a guiding background and going to that saster event, I was like, oh, we need guided experiences, guided connection experiences.

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We actually need to change the way Connection occurs and do it in such a way that it does open up people to those conversations.

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Yeah, I love that, especially because knowing part of what you do business wise.

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Where my head goes is is, obviously we're talking about two different sea words here today.

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We're talking about connections, but we're also talking about community, and I feel like that's a little unsettled in my mind right now because they're not the same thing.

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They're related and it takes connection to have a community.

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But bridge that gap for us, what is that difference between connection and community?

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Because I think Community is where the real power comes from.

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So we're definitely going to go there in today's conversation.

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But first things first.

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I feel like we need to bridge that gap.

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Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a good question.

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It's a really good question because I think that you can have community but not have connection.

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I think that if you have community, you have to figure out ways to create those connection points or your community isn't going to be long term viable.

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So so what is this idea or definition of community?

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You know we can start with communities being where you live, so that's literally that probably the oldest term of a community.

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And now you hear words.

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You know communities are influencers, audiences, or there are these slack channels and and so this definition of community.

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The opportunity I think that exists inside of this, inside of communities, is that you're getting this filtered audience, your this filtered group of people that share some commonality with each other.

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So there's already an opportunity for connection.

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There's a natural movement toward Having this, this baseline understanding of everyone that exists inside of these communities.

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Whether or not connection is activated in those communities is a separate thing, and that's where I think it truly does become a community is when connection exists.

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So every community out there, every community that you have, you have to identify what are those and you can think of like a rope, right.

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A rope has many threads inside of it interwoven and that's what makes it strong.

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So what are those Commonalities that your audience or that your community shares with one another, and how do you bring that up and actually weave those together so that you get that connection strength inside that community and that's that connection activation.

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I think there's a lot of ways to do that.

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I mean there's a lot of really great programs.

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There's a lot of great channels.

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There's a community.

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Managers in general are doing some some incredible things online In slack channels, discord channels, in in synchronous meetings.

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There's a lot of really fun innovation that's happening there on that space.

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But community as an idea Really has come to the forefront in the last four years or so and so there's a lot of innovation happening inside of of community itself, and I think we're going to see that shaping out.

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The interesting trend that we're seeing is that this sense of community, which was the direct place where you live, the neighborhood that you lived in, the city that you lived in there's this really interesting and there's some great books about this.

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Bowling alone is one of them and there's a lot of research on how direct you know geologically based, geographically based communities.

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People don't have that sense anymore, so you might be too young to remember this, brian, but there was a great show growing up called cheers, and it was this, basically this local bar, and the whole start of the show was you want to go to a place where people know your name, and today, if you look at the trends, you know people aren't as engaged in their community anymore.

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People don't go and drink at the bar anymore, they drink at home.

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People don't go to community organized events as much as they used to.

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They're not as involved in in their communities as they used to be.

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So the question then becomes where has community migrated?

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And I think a lot of that sense of belonging that we look for and that we need as human beings Is achieved at your work.

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It's achieved online, in online spaces, because you can migrate to these high.

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You know aggregated groups of people that you share interest with, which is great, but it also creates danger too, and I think that's why you know we've become so polarized in a lot of ways, because I can join any community and I can get validated for what I believe the whole premise behind this sense of you know social network was.

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You don't necessarily want to surround yourself with people that believe exactly the same thing that you believe, because then radicalization happens.

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You want to be able to get into conversations with people that believe things differently than you but you still share that common thread of connections so you can see them as a human and you can have a conversation and consider that.

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So that was a long answer to your question, brian, but I think that, intentionally, if you have a community, if you have an audience, what's your connection strategy?

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Is a great question to ask, an important question, because that is, if you've got a good connection strategy, that's only going to increase the how long your community is going to be around and how much value your community members get from being involved.

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Yeah, paul, I'll tell you what.

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Gosh.

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There's so many launch pads from what you just shared with us.

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The first one that I'm going to get out of the way quickly is I thought you were similar in age to me.

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How the heck do you remember cheers?

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I'm originally from Boston, so I've been to the cheers bar.

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But yes, I know what cheers is.

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That's awesome, yeah, no.

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I do.

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Cheers is.

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You'll have to look it up.

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It was a good show.

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I just remember it because my, my, my step sister and brother were always watching it when I'd come on from school.

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I love that.

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Well, that's awesome.

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But, honestly, where it really took me and where my mind kept going, as you were sharing this with us, is I'm a business junkie, so I view most things through the world of business and, as you're sharing it, I almost feel like this is the highest form of branding is community.

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I feel like that's what we should aspire towards, because in the world of business and marketing, we always talk about.

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You know you want to build brand awareness, but hearing you talk about this, I think about and I'm biased.

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You're challenging the way we all view community today, because I'm biased towards thinking of sports, for example.

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Sports are a big part of my life.

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That's a built in community that you have hobbies.

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For example, if someone plays tennis, immediately them and I are friends.

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There's no doubt about that.

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But where my mind keeps going with regards to business is thinking about those brands, like I'm going to call out Jeep right now.

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I've never had a Jeep.

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I've had friends who have Jeeps.

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There's something about what Jeep is doing that they have a decentralized community.

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They have a community that doesn't live in a geographical place, doesn't live in a Slack channel, doesn't live online.

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This is when Jeep owners drive past each other, they have the Jeep wave, they exchange rubber duckies when they see Jeep's parks in places.

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I still don't get that fad, but there's all sorts of elements to the Jeep community that when someone buys a Jeep they're going to be a Jeep owner for life and it's that community that really has established Jeep as the brand and the billion dollar you know, multi billion dollar company that it is today.

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Which leads me to the biggest question, palm, just asking you a bunch of loaded questions here today.

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How the heck do we actually go about doing that?

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Because we're talking about a car company.

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There's not, you know, the Toyota community.

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Jeep did something different.

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If we extrapolate that to gosh like Air Jordan Okay, air Jordan has a community.

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People who are sneakerheads identify as that label and they are of the same ilk how the heck do we create that in our businesses where we may not feel like it's a community based business?

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Great, question.

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I'm going to answer that impartial to what you outline, which is business communities, and I think that you have to understand.

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So I'm going to use a term I created called webinars.

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Okay, so we are coming from a place where everyone says content is king, and you know that that is probably true, but the interesting thing about content is that content gathers people, but when people consume content, they consume it largely by themselves, but content really is there to start conversations.

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It's there to get you thinking.

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So in your Jeep example, in Jeep, well, in your Jeep example, you can look at the type of content that they put out there.

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They're sharing their values.

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They're sharing what you can do with Jeeps.

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People are attracted to that.

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Now they're having conversations around all sorts of things and all these rituals are coming out of this right, and so where we're coming from in the business world is well, let's do a webinar.

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And if you think about a webinar, a webinar is a bunch of people still siloed, not connected, joining a digital video or whatever, and they might be able to connect via the chat, but they're there to consume content, and what I think is emerging now with this community movement is this idea of Web and Nots.

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So a Web and Not is the exact opposite of a webinar.

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It is not a webinar, it's the opportunity for people to come together and share learnings with each other.

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So masterminds, coaching groups, these types of things are trending quite a bit right now, and I think it gathers around the opposite side of that spectrum, which is okay.

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We have specialists, we have subject matter experts.

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We want to hear from them, but we also want to have conversations around this idea of the mutual engagement and uncertainty.

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So this is social learning theory, but the idea is let's gather around in a circle and let's talk about the questions that don't necessarily have answers, or the questions that have a lot of nuance to them, and let's share best practices around this.

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And so it's in that where I think business communities have a lot of opportunity.

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In the past, a business would identify their ideal client persona or their ideal client profile, and they would identify what that ICP's pain points are, and then they would craft a message as to how their product solves that particular pain point.

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And so then you look at like an outbound motion, and outbound motion is hey, let's get on the call.

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We're going to call all these ideal client personas and we're going to say, hey, do you have this pain?

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Hey, do you have this pain, hey, do you have this pain?

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So the approach is I've got this massive list and I'm going to turn and burn through it so that I can find the very small percentage of people who, at that moment, at that time, have that pain.

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And then I'm going to sell to them.

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And if you look at like 2015 and beyond, outbound conversion rates have decreased.

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People are kind of tired of that.

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So this new approach, what community brings to the table for businesses is you're already spending time identifying the pain points that your ideal persona has and those pain points some of them relate to your business product and some of them don't, but you're already invested in that persona anyway.

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So why not create a space where social learning theory, where you can gather people together in small breakout rooms you know three to four people and give them a discussion prompt to talk about?

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So this is something we do in the fractional executive brain trust.

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We get together and we say how are you doing prospecting?

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What does your 60 to 90 day plan look like?

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And there's this concept really great book called influencer.

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There's this concept of positive deviance.

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So inside any community, inside any audience, there are people that are doing things in a deviant way and getting positive results so deviant.

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In the past it was like juveniles are deviant, they're doing things in a bad way, they're getting bad results.

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But there's the flip side of that, which is that people are doing new things, novel things, by themselves and they're getting great results, and they're and those results so that they're doing things differently deviant and they're getting great results positive.

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So all of a sudden you have all these like pockets of positive deviance inside this community and when you bring them together to talk about certain topics, you allow those positive deviance to share those best practices and those best practices can get shared out.

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People can leave with ideas, people are leaving with more connection, people are leaving with a bigger and better network.

00:21:35.515 --> 00:21:45.595
So a lot of these things happen with business around just the topics that are related to the problems that their personas are having.

00:21:45.595 --> 00:22:19.194
Let's bring them together and instead, you know we might bring in a little subject matter expertise, but instead let's just ask a really good question that takes us to the mutual engagement and uncertainty and let's just explore that together, and doing that enables best practices to be shared in all this kind of distribution of really good ideas and people feel connected, they feel seen her and respected and they're able to share some of those experience, that the experiences that they've had, both learnings and successes.

00:22:21.317 --> 00:22:34.055
Yeah, paul, I'll tell you what one of our core models behind this show is that a rising tide lifts all boats, and what I'm hearing from you is that's a core part of building a successful community is let those rising tides show and let those rising tides also help to lift all those other boats.

00:22:34.055 --> 00:22:38.732
Feels great, actually using this analogy with a former river guide, so I love that.

00:22:38.732 --> 00:22:46.434
That also ties in there, but I think it's so important I mean I think back to give listeners a really tangible example that I inadvertently, I didn't even realize I was doing this.

00:22:46.434 --> 00:22:49.295
This is just the pure extrovert and me really enjoyed it.

00:22:49.295 --> 00:22:53.178
We launched the show in 2016.

00:22:53.178 --> 00:22:56.642
Since then, millions of business podcasts have launched.

00:22:56.642 --> 00:23:08.555
Very few have made it to 800 plus episodes like we have, and part of the reason why we caught on like wildfire back in 2016 2017 was we were hosting the show for years.

00:23:08.555 --> 00:23:13.500
It was not a webinar, we just invited entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs to come hang out on zoom.

00:23:13.500 --> 00:23:22.068
We had hundreds of people in these zoom rooms just talking and splitting into breakout rooms, and that became such a core part of yes, a community.

00:23:22.068 --> 00:23:33.088
Even though we're just a podcast, so to speak, it's such a core part of our growth plan and those people became advocates for the show and told it to their friends, who told it to their friends, and the rest is history from there.

00:23:33.654 --> 00:23:43.269
Paul, I really love the fact that you're illuminating this, because we don't think of it as marketing, we don't think of it as brand building in the moment, but it really is a powerful tool for that.

00:23:43.269 --> 00:23:45.719
It almost makes me go all philosophical on you.

00:23:45.719 --> 00:23:51.328
In that classic, I think it was Emmanuel Kant who talked about doing things as the means to an end.

00:23:51.328 --> 00:23:58.501
You already threw a little bit of shade on the typical funnels and in people, getting people into their conversion mechanisms.

00:23:58.501 --> 00:23:59.903
Talk to us about that.

00:23:59.903 --> 00:24:01.924
How much of this is intentionally saying?

00:24:01.924 --> 00:24:02.265
You know what?

00:24:02.265 --> 00:24:05.728
I'm gonna build a community for the sake of community building versus.

00:24:05.728 --> 00:24:09.132
I'm going to build this as a strategic part of my overall mix.

00:24:11.336 --> 00:24:12.396
I, you know it's good.

00:24:12.396 --> 00:24:23.384
I don't think you can separate those two things because you know you take like a founder and let's take you, brian, and your podcast right.

00:24:23.384 --> 00:24:40.440
You, having done 800 episodes, you are very intimately aware of the problems that any entrepreneur is facing when they're first starting out and when they're first getting going, all the mountains that they're going to have to overcome, and you're addressing those in your podcast.

00:24:40.440 --> 00:24:58.761
Businesses create a solution for a specific problem, but the founder has to be intimately aware of and know about all of those problems, and so I think it's hard to separate strategy from just let's do some good and build a community.

00:24:58.761 --> 00:25:05.388
And that's actually what I really really love about it is you can still do some really good stuff and do it.

00:25:05.388 --> 00:25:23.469
Do it in a selfish way, because you already have to know the problems that the persona has and, instead of just hitting to one point of their problem, create a community where all those problems can be discussed.

00:25:23.469 --> 00:25:33.382
You as the founder, you as the business, are going to learn a ton About how that person, how those people, talk about the problem, what the problems actually are.

00:25:33.382 --> 00:25:34.884
I had a client.

00:25:34.884 --> 00:25:55.936
We built an HR brain, or we built an HR community, for we've been building it for three years and what they realized after doing this for a while was that the way that they were talking about the problem Isn't the way that their HR people were talking about the problem, and so they were able to kind of shift and change their messaging.

00:25:55.936 --> 00:26:11.472
But if you're already going to be aware of all the problems that your persona is going to have because, I mean, you're going to be doing interviews, your product people are going to be doing interviews it makes sense to create a space where those conversations can just happen.

00:26:11.472 --> 00:26:12.784
And so you're right.

00:26:12.784 --> 00:26:19.988
I did throw shade a little bit on outbound just because it seems so basic, like let's just get a list and call through it and look for pain.

00:26:19.988 --> 00:26:43.374
The community approach is I want to stay in orbit, I want to be in the constellation of my customer and I want to create a space where they can get value and where they can get answers to all of their problems, knowing that at some point that customer is going to come into the pain that I solve.

00:26:43.374 --> 00:26:54.352
And so at that point I want to have enough trust and goodwill with that client or with that potential customer that they think about me and or they think about us and our product.

00:26:54.352 --> 00:27:01.492
And so, going back to your Jeep example, jeep has this incredible community.

00:27:01.492 --> 00:27:07.726
People have these shared values, people are going on these adventures, people are swapping stories, people are customizing their Jeep.

00:27:07.726 --> 00:27:12.411
It's turned into something that's much, much bigger than I just need to get from point A to point B.

00:27:12.411 --> 00:27:15.709
The question becomes how am I getting from point A to point B?

00:27:15.709 --> 00:27:17.266
When am I getting to point A to point B?

00:27:17.266 --> 00:27:22.112
And people are having all these types of great conversations as a result of that.

00:27:22.112 --> 00:27:41.571
So, in a business environment, you're already doing all of this work to uncover all of these challenges, but I think you can take it a step further and you can cultivate an environment where people are getting more than just your point solution value.

00:27:41.571 --> 00:27:43.807
They're able to learn from one another.

00:27:44.720 --> 00:27:47.128
I do think that there's an expiration on this.

00:27:47.128 --> 00:27:50.410
You know, not every company is going to be able to build communities in the future.

00:27:50.410 --> 00:28:00.250
I think that the community or companies that are thinking about this now are the companies that are going to have successful communities in the future.

00:28:00.250 --> 00:28:05.071
I think in the future it's going to be very hard for companies to build communities if they haven't already.

00:28:05.071 --> 00:28:07.026
So it's not going to.

00:28:07.026 --> 00:28:15.268
You know, I think that it's going to be interesting to see how this plays out, but I think this is the next phase of.

00:28:15.268 --> 00:28:21.108
You had outbound, you had inbound and now you're starting to see these terms near bound.

00:28:21.108 --> 00:28:25.369
You're seeing these terms, instead of go to market, go to network.

00:28:25.369 --> 00:28:37.030
So the network effects of us as human beings is starting to come into play and I think it's the next higher energy iteration of serving customers.

00:28:37.559 --> 00:28:40.549
Yeah, gosh, paul, I'll tell you what I'm going to confess here on the air.

00:28:40.549 --> 00:28:42.887
Listeners will know this because they tune in five days a week.

00:28:42.887 --> 00:28:46.329
That was one of the trickiest questions I've ever thrown out there.

00:28:46.329 --> 00:28:52.050
Incudos to you for answering it the way that you did and especially I love that you tied it in at the end with the word of energy.

00:28:52.099 --> 00:29:07.570
I'm a big believer in the power of energy, because when you talk about the fact that this is all tied in together, when we're talking business, I think the biggest business lesson that I've learned here in my 30s is that everything we do business wise has to be that exchange of energy.

00:29:07.680 --> 00:29:29.030
So, yeah, it's great to go into the marketplace and altruistically say we do these things for nothing other than altruism, but the reality is exchange of energy flows two ways, and so all of these things serve both the people who we want to be of service to, but they also serve us so that we can continue to get that energy in all the different ways that it's measured and keep continuing to serve others.

00:29:29.039 --> 00:29:40.579
So I think that was a really powerful and insightful answer for you, and I think it speaks to the core of how you see community as such an essential ingredient to all of us in the way that we do business, the way that we connect with others, the way that we live our lives.

00:29:40.579 --> 00:29:49.334
So I really love the way you took that and, on that note, I think it's a perfect transition to go into the world of Brigio, because you don't just come here and talk about these things.

00:29:49.334 --> 00:29:56.885
You are, I think, the way that you talk about these things, you are a pioneer in the way that you view these things and take action, so share with listeners.

00:29:56.885 --> 00:29:58.266
What the heck does Brigio do?

00:29:58.266 --> 00:30:02.971
I'm so excited to hear your perspective on it as well, having done my own research on your business.

00:30:03.582 --> 00:30:07.368
Thanks, appreciate that and I appreciate your perspective on that too.

00:30:07.368 --> 00:30:12.250
It's cool to hear your kind of journey and what you've been doing with a podcast and things like that.

00:30:12.250 --> 00:30:41.095
So with Brigio, the idea is you have to remember OK, coming from this, this Riverguide background, looking into digital experiences, realizing that we actually need digital connection, experiences that are different from in real life, and so the idea or the concept behind Brigio is that, if you have a community that needs to be connected, let's deploy learning circles.

00:30:41.095 --> 00:30:45.912
So I was talking about this earlier, which is social learning theory, the mutual engagement and uncertainty.

00:30:45.912 --> 00:30:53.272
Let's gather together small groups and let's give them discussion prompts to talk about so that best practice sharing can occur.

00:30:53.272 --> 00:31:02.969
Let's create these little learning circles where people can swap stories and where people can connect with one another on you know, you said it earlier like tennis or Jeep or whatever.

00:31:02.969 --> 00:31:28.770
Let's find these threads that unite us across identities and enable us to have conversations, and that that's the idea behind what we're, what we're trying to build at Brigio, and so right now, what we do is we're a bootstrap startup, so we have a service aside, and then we have a software side, and the service aside of what we do is we build communities for companies.

00:31:28.770 --> 00:31:34.240
I go to a company, comes to us and says our ideal client persona is X, the.

00:31:34.240 --> 00:31:36.388
What we do is we go out on their behalf.

00:31:36.388 --> 00:31:40.029
So we're kind of a fractional community team, if you will.

00:31:40.029 --> 00:31:49.922
We go out and we build a community of that based community on and on their behalf, for them, and we get the.

00:31:49.922 --> 00:31:56.292
Usually we'll get the founder involved or someone higher up in the company, someone that needs to be close to the customer.

00:31:56.292 --> 00:31:59.449
So we do that on a retainer type basis.

00:31:59.449 --> 00:32:01.446
So that's the service, aside of what Brigio does.

00:32:01.446 --> 00:32:07.288
And then we've also been building this digital product that is you.

00:32:07.368 --> 00:32:08.790
Zoom is or it's.

00:32:08.790 --> 00:32:11.134
It's in comparison to zoom.

00:32:11.134 --> 00:32:12.744
Zoom is a great tool.

00:32:12.744 --> 00:32:15.509
You land in there, you can get work done, you can hit the ground running.

00:32:15.509 --> 00:32:28.608
But Everyone that goes on Zoom or any, pretty much at this point any platform out there will land in a video, digital video room with no context.

00:32:28.608 --> 00:32:35.067
What Bridget does is you can think of Bridget was like the sorting hat of Harry Potter.

00:32:36.195 --> 00:32:43.865
You go through a series of questions and there's hundreds of different types of templated questions that we can create.

00:32:43.865 --> 00:32:46.123
We call these connection experiences.

00:32:46.123 --> 00:32:48.403
What you do is you craft a connection experience.

00:32:48.403 --> 00:32:56.528
In that connection experience, you choose questions that you want to ask the participants.

00:32:56.528 --> 00:33:00.144
They go through those questions based off how they answer those questions.

00:33:00.144 --> 00:33:06.701
We have an algorithm and we also utilize OpenAI to help us sort people into small groups of three to four people.

00:33:06.701 --> 00:33:17.121
Once they land in their video breakout room, we give them discussion prompts to discuss and they're able to connect in there, so on and so forth.

00:33:17.121 --> 00:33:27.506
Now you've got this, you land in your breakout room and you know the commonality that you share with everybody else, and then we give you these discussion prompts where you can connect with other people.

00:33:28.256 --> 00:33:33.948
The idea behind it is we want to create the digital handshake.

00:33:33.948 --> 00:33:39.146
Bridget is the digital handshake that makes hugging in real life possible.

00:33:39.146 --> 00:33:43.786
It's not designed to replace in real life.

00:33:43.786 --> 00:33:52.846
In real life is always going to be awesome and it's always going to be better, but what in real life shouldn't be is it shouldn't be strangers meeting strangers.

00:33:52.846 --> 00:33:55.623
That should be happening digitally.

00:33:55.623 --> 00:34:01.663
When you meet with someone in real life, you want to take that relationship a little bit deeper.

00:34:01.663 --> 00:34:03.501
You want to have a shared experience with them.

00:34:04.416 --> 00:34:09.565
Early on, when I was starting Bridgio, I had a conversation with the executive director of Las Vegas.

00:34:09.565 --> 00:34:11.762
This was right at the beginning of COVID.

00:34:11.762 --> 00:34:17.465
Vegas, of course, was a ghost town, but the future of Vegas is events and it is these experiences.

00:34:17.465 --> 00:34:21.425
I asked him obviously are you guys worried about this?

00:34:21.425 --> 00:34:22.298
How long this could go?

00:34:22.298 --> 00:34:24.061
He's like we're not worried about this at all.

00:34:24.061 --> 00:34:25.942
I said well, what's the future of events?

00:34:25.942 --> 00:34:30.885
He said the future of events are smaller, more curated experiences.

00:34:31.715 --> 00:34:37.262
People are going to want to gather with people that they already know and have shared experiences with each other.

00:34:37.262 --> 00:34:41.927
I think that's where, in real life, is where you get the most out of in real life.

00:34:41.927 --> 00:34:50.684
There's a lot of research that shows that if a bunch of strangers get together at a conference, nine out of 10 of the relationships you make at a conference will be gone in a year.

00:34:50.684 --> 00:34:56.927
So digital is the perfect place where you can start to form those small connections.

00:34:56.927 --> 00:35:05.643
Then, when you go to the in-person conference, you already have your community, you already have your people that you can build those deeper relationships with.

00:35:05.643 --> 00:35:08.583
So that's the whole idea behind that software.

00:35:08.583 --> 00:35:09.976
Yeah, gosh.

00:35:10.077 --> 00:35:16.523
Paul, hearing you talk about it firsthand, it's so clear how passionate you are about the power of connection and community.

00:35:16.523 --> 00:35:20.266
I think you've earned your moniker here today of a connection chemist.

00:35:20.266 --> 00:35:22.563
So all of your brilliance has been on display.

00:35:22.563 --> 00:35:25.403
I think that's such a perfect segue for you to drop those links on us.

00:35:25.403 --> 00:35:47.563
I know that I'm super keen to follow your developments and, even more than just your business's growth, the clients that you serve, because I think that you're really going to raise that bar when it comes to branding, when it comes to marketing, when it comes to that connection and the communities that are going to live inside of the world of business, which all of this is to say that you're making business better, which makes life better, which makes society better.

00:35:47.563 --> 00:35:52.503
You talked about the divisiveness in society, so I think the work that you're doing is so incredibly important.

00:35:52.503 --> 00:35:56.025
So, for listeners who want to go deeper into your work, drop those links on us.

00:35:56.025 --> 00:35:57.179
Where should they go from here?

00:35:58.282 --> 00:35:58.563
Thanks.

00:35:58.563 --> 00:36:00.521
Well, we can connect on LinkedIn.

00:36:00.521 --> 00:36:03.119
Of course, you can also follow.

00:36:03.119 --> 00:36:07.721
I have a podcast that you can follow as well, but LinkedIn will be a great place to connect.

00:36:08.536 --> 00:36:10.543
Yes, listeners, you already know the drill.

00:36:10.543 --> 00:36:19.643
We are making it as easy as possible for you to go deep down the amazing rabbit hole of all the great work that Paul is doing, and you can get a heck of a lot more of him on his own podcast.

00:36:19.643 --> 00:36:20.385
So don't be shy.

00:36:20.385 --> 00:36:34.186
Check out the show notes down below for a link to Bridgio's website, a link to Paul's website, as well as a link to Paul's personal LinkedIn and Paul, on behalf of myself and all the listeners around the world, thanks so much for sharing so generously with us here today on the podcast.

00:36:35.318 --> 00:36:38.992
Thanks, Brian, and congratulations on an awesome show and all the work you've been doing.

00:36:38.992 --> 00:36:39.355
Thank you.

00:36:40.862 --> 00:36:45.434
Hey, it's Brian here, and thanks for tuning in to yet another episode of the Wontropner to Entrepreneur podcast.

00:36:45.434 --> 00:36:49.434
If you haven't checked us out online, there's so much good stuff there.

00:36:49.434 --> 00:36:58.795
Check out the show's website and all the show notes that we talked about in today's episode at thewontropnershowcom, and I just want to give a shout out to our amazing guests.

00:36:58.795 --> 00:37:07.434
There's a reason why we are ad free and have produced so many incredible episodes five days a week for you, and it's because our guests step up to the plate.

00:37:08.463 --> 00:37:09.675
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00:37:09.675 --> 00:37:11.114
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00:37:11.114 --> 00:37:14.614
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00:37:14.614 --> 00:37:25.293
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00:37:25.293 --> 00:37:34.715
So thank you to not only today's guests, but all of our guests in general, and I just want to invite you check out our website because you can send us a voicemail there.

00:37:34.715 --> 00:37:35.954
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00:37:35.954 --> 00:37:40.186
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00:37:40.186 --> 00:37:42.034
Initiate a live chat.

00:37:42.034 --> 00:37:51.793
It's for real me, and I'm excited because I'll see you, as always every Monday, wednesday, friday, saturday and Sunday here on the Wontropner to entrepreneur podcast.